Review for Tower of Time. PC game, the video game came out on 12/04/2018
Imagine a fantasy world, like so many have seen in many RPG settings. Imagine, however, that this world, the world that our character knows, is only a pale reminder of what it once was, that everything that surrounds us was born and raised on the ruins of an ancient and powerful civilization, able to combining magic and technology. This is in short what awaits us in Tower of Time, latest effort of the study Event Horizon.
Tower of Time, currently available in early access on Steam, immediately presents itself as a rather classic RPG. In the initial phase, basically the introduction to the game, we will play the role of a human kid, a simple hunter, who during a raid in the woods finds the ruins of a strange tower "on the contrary", or rather deeply embedded in the earth's crust rather than soar towards the sky.
The control of our young hunter is really simple: just click with the pointer on a point on the screen and he will go there. Just move the cursor over an object and, if available, a message will appear that will confirm the possibility of interacting with the object.
In this very first phase we will guide the character inside the tower, thus becoming familiar with the exploration system and we will also begin to understand the complex lore of the game world, given that we will meet living constructs and an entity that is not better identified for the moment. will reveal our destiny: our character is a sort of chosen one of some kind, like others there have been in the past. Unfortunately we are not ready yet even if our time will come: we will then find ourselves passed out in a clearing with only a vague memory of what happened. After becoming adults, and having also made a career not just, we will finally be able to satisfy the hidden desire that has followed us all our life: to find and explore the Upside Down Tower. And here, the actual game begins.
Since we have become big guns in the royal army, for our expedition we will take with us a certain number of champions, adventurous specialists at our service: these characters will make up the real exploration team. We, already advanced in years, will coordinate everything, letting others do the dirty work.
With our nice party of heroes, we will then set out to explore the mysterious tower, with the same mechanics seen in the introduction. Simple point and click exploration, in a very detailed and colorful isometric environment. This time, however, there will also be a struggle, and here we find one of the peculiarities of Tower of Time.
As soon as we enter the combat phase, the view will basically switch to a sort of "arena", representing more or less the environment in which we were. We will have to control our currently active characters as if they were units of some real-time strategy game. Each one will have its offensive and defensive abilities, the range of attacks and, just like in an RTS, we will be able to give orders to a single character or a group of several people, making multiple selection with the mouse.
Also interesting is the way to cast some spells, that is, literally “drawing” the area of effect of the spell directly on the battlefield. In the most heated clashes there will also be a sort of "bullet time", or phases of the game in which the passage of time slows down considerably, allowing us to perform devastating attacks.
The experience gained and the various loot obtained (the game has a random looting system) can obviously be used to improve our champions in view of the clashes with the various bosses that we will meet along the way, some of which are really tough, even at difficulty intermediate. Overall Tower of Time is a good game, devoid of major flaws but certainly not perfect.
In our opinion, a questionable choice, in the combat phase, is that the opponents arrive in waves: defeat the first, a few seconds and it is done under the second; which returns a feeling a little too dated and confusing. If in exploration I see a passage blocked by three opponents, I may be tempted to evaluate the fight as against three opponents and consequently decide whether to flee or engage them. Too bad that the first three are just for example the first of five waves of enemies of various types. It is certainly not too penalizing a flaw, but at times it can be a source of frustration.
Another problem, but really relative, is the lack of localization in Spanish. If the game's controls are simple and intuitive, the fascinating lore of Tower of Time can be discovered by reading the tomes that are around, examining and talking. Those who don't chew English may be missing out on something meaningful.
For the rest, as already mentioned, Tower of Time proves to be an excellent title, both technically speaking and from the side of involvement. Must try for fans of the genre!
► Tower of Time is an RPG-Tactical game developed and published by Event Horizon for PC, the video game was released on 12/04/2018
